


The Place Next to Mine

by NotSoSecretlyAUnicorn



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Agent 83/Gerald Mackenzie Moody, Auckland, Gen, Jaz the Borzoi, Lunatics, Non-Linear Narrative, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, PTSD sort of, Patch Prentice, and a car chase, and wine and cuddles afterwards, apparently there's a plot, canon will likely also be a little sacrificed, it's short for 'Patricia' okay, the author is sacrificing science on the altar of plot again, this time with an orgy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-03 09:30:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 8,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2846201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotSoSecretlyAUnicorn/pseuds/NotSoSecretlyAUnicorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I can explain everything.”</p><p>Which is about the point when the elevator explodes two floors down.</p><p>---</p><p>Also known as the fic where Bucky goes on the run, ends up in Auckland and accidentally makes friends with his neighbour.  Which goes about as well as you'd expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Landfall

**Author's Note:**

> Patch is mine, so is the gassy borzoi, and the apartment is actually based on an apartment a friend of mine had in downtown Auckland.
> 
> #sorrynotsorry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Because it was so much worse, before..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My brain did a thing.
> 
> And then Spaceship enabled me.
> 
> ...sorry (notsorry).

_“I’m always…I’m always grateful you met me when you did.  I mean, I was kind of an asshole to you, I know that, but I was…_

_“Because it was worse, before.  I was so much worse.”_

 

He hadn’t eaten in the beginning.  He went back to the bank vault ready to clear it the way he’d been taught – programmed – to clear enemy bases, but the technicians there fled the moment he showed on the security feed, leaving him alone to pace restlessly, flinching at shadows and sparks of light on the edge of his vision, imagined lightning descending from the cerebral calibration halo suspended above the chair.

 

He didn’t know it then, but the light and shadow, the frenetic energy, were the first signs of a broken wipe.

 

Eventually the shock caught up with him and he spent the next three days jammed as far back as he could in a corner of the room, staring at the chair, as though waiting for it to move, to attack.  Sometimes he was convinced it _had_ moved, that the restraints were twitching, trying to open, that the upholstery of was rippling like the skin of a shifting animal, muscles bunching, readying to spring.  He slept in fits and starts, shivering himself awake or thrashing back to awareness in the grip of a nightmare – nothing clear, just shapes, voices, pointless rhythmic screams and a grinding sensation that shook the air from his lungs.

 

On the fourth day he woke up hungry, and with a point of mental pressure in his head, almost like the impulses that drove him back to his handlers after a completed mission.

 

He took to the back alleys and stole street clothes, expertly shoplifted food, just enough to take the edge off, and followed his internal compass wherever it took him.

 

Intel – he needed information.  Information would give him the tools to sort fact from fiction and redefined his defunct mission parameters.

 

_“So where did you go?”_

_“…Smithsonian.  They had a Captain America exhibit.”_

_“Shit.”_

_“Seeing…seeing what you know is your own face…in a context that’s just…totally foreign…”_

_“There are no words.”_

_“None.”_

 

He fled.

 

He went back to the bank vault, heedless of everything else, and demolished the place.  He took the chair apart like it was made of wet cardboard and tore down the cerebral halo in a shower of shrieking metal and white sparks.  He crushed every tool and hauled the deposit boxes out of the walls to smash them under foot.  He made the room into a wasteland and then set fire to the whole lot just to make sure.

 

When the fire trucks came around the corner, he was already three blocks away and gaining speed.

 

+++


	2. It's an experience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What is Marmite, anyway?”
> 
> Patch drops her arms and walks backwards towards the kitchenette, grinning (which is alarming) and says, “An experience.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #sorrynotsorry

+++

 

“You have a choice.”

 

His eyes snap open and fix on the silhouette hovering over him.  “What?” he croaks.

 

Patch holds up two plastic jars.  “Marmite or Vegemite?”

 

Jamie peers at her under the crook of his arm.  “If I say the wrong one are you going to get Jaz to sit on me again?”

 

The old Borzoi looks up at the sound of his name.  The worry with Jasper is that rearranging sometimes triggers flatulence…

 

“…probably.”

 

Jamie groans, letting his arm fall back over his face for a moment before Patch jabs him with a toe and he answers her with a glare.  She cocks an eyebrow at him and waggles the jars.  He studies her face, then the jars, then her face again.

 

He takes a breath, puts his front teeth against his lower lip to start a V sound…

 

Patch’s eyes narrow.

 

“…Marmite?”

 

“Is that a statement or a question?”

 

“Marmite.”

 

Patch double punches the air with the jars still in both fists.  “James Winter, you get to live!”

 

“Yay,” Jamie says, dry as the desert.  “What is Marmite, anyway?”

 

Patch drops her arms and walks backwards towards the kitchenette, grinning (which is alarming) and says, “An experience.”

 

Ten minutes later Jamie bites into his sandwich and then bolts to the sink shouting, “You’re a terrible friend!” while Patch nearly laughs her way right off the couch.

 

+++

 

Patch is short for Patricia Marie Prentice.

 

“But no one calls me that,” she adds, very quickly, and with a sharp look from under the mermaid’s swag of sandy hair.  As if to say, ‘or else.’

 

Patch is the name she chose at the highly opinionated age of three and a half, because Trish rhymed with fish, and Pat was the name of a stop-motion postman.

 

He understands, though, because Bucky is the name of a familiar stranger, a man who wore his face first, and the Winter Soldier is the moniker of a weapon, not a name that your friends call you.

 

…when you have friends.

 

Whoever he is now, he appears to have made at least one.

 

So he chooses his name.

 

“I’m…” and the hesitation is fractional, tiny, so tiny, barely a breath, “James Winter.”

 

Pieces of both of him, borrowed from the disparate parts of his life.

 

But Patch calls him Jamie.

 

+++


	3. Pandora's box opens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He tries to remember what he liked, tries to figure out what he enjoys and what he tolerates and what he hates. How is food a series of tastes instead of just a fuel? How is a warm, dry day better than a cold, wet one? What is a comfort, what is to endure?

+++

 

His apartment is a double-decker shoebox.

 

Seven point six meters from the front door to the back wall, south to north, and half that east to west.  The back wall faces downtown and is nearly all window, since they’re just about the only windows in the place.  There’s a mezzanine bedroom with a tiny _en suite_ above, and below it, at right angles to the front door, is a little kitchenette.  It has a sink and a pair of built in elements, and there’s a space in the over-bench cupboards for a microwave.  The previous tenants have left their little fridge-freezer behind, and the land agent said if he wanted he could have it. 

 

In the mornings, he teaches himself to wake slowly, to relax back into the warm nest of his bed and watch the angle of the light change as it makes its way across the ceiling, the red and amber angles of dawn softening into the ambient yellow of true day. 

 

He tries to vary his days, fighting against himself when he feels himself establishing a routine, falling into the day-eating regimens he was drilled in to keep when not on ice, in the lulls between action on missions.  He tries to remember what he liked, tries to figure out what he enjoys and what he tolerates and what he hates.  How is food a series of tastes instead of just a fuel?  How is a warm, dry day better than a cold, wet one?  What is a comfort, what is to endure? 

 

The concept of entertaining himself is…  For months, there is the nagging sensation that there is something else he should be doing; something more useful, something important.  He finds himself sitting rigidly on his threadbare two-seater, staring fixedly at his television, watching a show as though it’s an audio-visual mission brief and realizing that he’s waiting for orders.

 

The first time it happens he jack-knifes forward at the waist and scrabbles for the French doors that lead to the tiny balcony.  He stands in the wind, lets it tear at him, run brisk fingers over his face and through his hair.  He feels too hot and nauseated, like something is dying inside him, the rot leeching out and poisoning him.

 

This is when the nightmares really start.

 

+++


	4. Hobo erotica, part one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “High tea,” she repeats. “We’re having it.”

+++

 

“High tea!” Patch announces one afternoon.

 

“What?” Jamie says from his sprawl over her couch, half buried under the leggy shag-pile carpet that is Jasper.

 

“High tea,” she repeats. “We’re having it.”

 

High tea, he is made to understand, is going to a fancy café or restaurant and choosing from a range of fancy teas while being served a variety of tiny, fancy cakes and sandwiches on a tiered plate. And you have to dress up fancy too.

 

“I am putting on a dress and _you_ –” she says, tapping his sweatpants-clad shin with her foot, “– enough of this hobo erotica.”

 

“What did you call me?” he blurts, sitting up and partially dislodging Jaz.

 

“You are going put to put on a pair of pants that don’t have elastic in them,” Patch carries on, “and a shirt that buttons and we are going to have tea and cake like actual, legit grown-ups.”

 

“Or we could have tea and cake here,” he says.

 

“OR we could have tea and cake somewhere where I don’t have to do the dishes,” she says brightly back, her smile slightly manic, and Jamie immediately realizes that this is cabin fever coming to a head. Her latest job has just finished and she’s sick of her own space.

 

Resistance is, evidentially, futile.

 

+++


	5. Tragic as

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Dude, I have no idea WHY, just, like, have you seen one? Tall, hairy, long-as tragic face, answers to Jaz, Jasper or You Little Shit.”

+++

 

Someone is knocking on his door.

 

He stills and, movements fluid with caution, steals over to it. He has no gun; too difficult to bring into the country unnoticed, and he has yet to find a place to acquire one outside of the notice of the authorities. The work never brought him here, he doesn’t know the lay of the criminal land enough.

 

He doesn’t know if he wants to.

 

Instead, he secrets a small knife up his sleeve and opens the door a crack, chain rattling.

 

He is confronted by a pair of hazel eyes, wide with worry, set in a pale, triangular face.

 

“Hi,” she says, and he hears the slightly elevated pitch of anxiety, “have you seen a dog?”

 

“Why would I have seen a dog?”

 

“Dude, I have no idea _why_ , just, like, _have you seen one_? Tall, hairy, long-as tragic face, answers to Jaz, Jasper or You Little Shit.”

 

He stares at her.

 

“No,” he says, and closes the door.

 

“Thanks for all your help!” she shouts through it at him, and he honestly can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic or is just _that_ manic.

 

+++


	6. The One Red Pigeon in Downtown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> According to Patch there is only one red – or rather, russet and cream – pigeon in downtown Auckland, and he is alternately a sign of the impending apocalypse or a harbinger of seeing people you knew in high school and secretly wanted to bone and/or smite with the force of your fiery internalized teen rage.
> 
> Jamie secretly marvels at her ability to deify a perfectly ordinary bird and do it in such a way that even he can’t tell if she’s being ironic about it or not.

+++

 

There is something fluttering on Jamie’s balcony.

 

“Dude,” says Patch, incredulous, “is that the One Red Pigeon in Downtown?”

 

According to Patch there is only one red – or rather, russet and cream – pigeon in downtown Auckland, and he is alternately a sign of the impending apocalypse or a harbinger of seeing people you knew in high school and secretly wanted to bone and/or smite with the force of your fiery internalized teen rage.

 

Jamie secretly marvels at her ability to deify a perfectly ordinary bird and do it in such a way that even he can’t tell if she’s being ironic about it or not.

 

Although, hey, that might _actually_ be the One Red Pigeon in Downtown futzing about on his balcony. It’s certainly the right colour… and seems to be getting frustrated with his closed French doors – there’s a lot of thwarted pecking and flapping going on.

 

They watch it strut importantly back and forth for a stunned minute before Jamie has mercy and goes to open the door. The pigeon scuttles backwards, turns in a few flustered circles and then marches over to him and stands next to his right foot.

 

Jamie stares down at it, looks over at Patch, who shrugs elaborately, eyes still wide, and then looks back at the pigeon.

 

The pigeon, upon registering his utter lack of response, tilts its head back and to the side to eye him beadily.

 

Jamie feels a little like he’s just been put on notice.

 

Slowly, he bends down and offers the pigeon a cupped hand. It steps daintily onto his palm and stays calm while he lifts it to eye level.

 

There’s a black band around it’s left leg with a tiny container attached; flat, barely ten by ten millimetres, the capacity barely enough for a scrape of folded paper, or a mini SD card.

 

There’s a familiar symbol on the side.

 

“What is it?” Patch asks from behind him.

 

“Nothing, just a leg band. Must be tame,” he says, crushing the container with his metal fingers.

 

The One Red Pigeon in Downtown is a harbinger, after all.

 

+++

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG IS THAT PLOT?! CUE SHOCKED FACE - O8
> 
> Also, for those of you wondering there is an actual One Red Pigeon in Downtown and while I have never encountered anyone I secretly wished to bone, he has often heralded meeting someone from school unexpectedly. I have mixed feelings about this bird.


	7. Me myself and I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saviour soldier thinker spy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loves to all those who've left kudos!

+++

 

‘Wipe’ is a misnomer. 

 

What was called a wipe was in fact a suppressor, a blank cover over the oubliette that held the things he used to be, rotting slowly into loam in the furthest reaches of his mind.

 

He who came before, the man that Steven G Rogers called ‘Bucky’ and ‘friend’, he’s there, tucked as safely away as his besieged mind could manage.  He’s broken up, fragmented, mostly impressions with a handful of intact memories.  He filters through as déjà vu and unexplained familiarity, the feeling that this thing that he’s doing, that he’s seeing or saying, smelling or tasting, this is a part of him, of his distant past.  Close and far, just out of reach.

 

The Soldier is here, mostly.  Cold and precise, patiently waiting for the next order, but restless for action, biding time…until he realizes there are no more orders coming.  Then his hands shake and he paces, cases his three exits – front door, balcony, tiny bathroom window – sharpens knives, does push ups, chin-ups, katas, stays ready for the thing that isn’t coming.

 

Not unless they find him.

 

It wouldn’t matter to who he was before, to the remnants of the Soldier in him, breaking down as the wipe remains unreinforced, but it matters to who he is now.  It matters the man who was born inside him, the moment Steven G Rogers said his name, said “I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”

 

Whoever he will be, it matters to him.

 

+++


	8. Hobo erotica part two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Pfft, what personal space? You don’t need personal space, you need a personal shopper.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patch is just terrible but I keep letting her out of her cage...

+++

 

Jamie rather thinks this is going to be an experience the way Marmite was an experience.

 

Patch presents the tickets at breakfast one Saturday, and tricks him into saying yes by bribing him with pancakes and actual, real maple syrup.  There’s even fresh blueberries (which he has because Jamie has this bizarre aversion to banana).

 

Of course, the moment the dishes are done, he’s herded back to his own apartment so that Patch can rummage through his wardrobe with her typical lack of concern for personal space (“pfft, what personal space?  You don’t need personal space, you need a personal shopper,”) and then herded back out so he can be supervised buying clothes whose proveniences do not include hobos and/or bikers.

 

“It’s not that I object to the leather daddy look,” Patch says, perched on a chair in front of the changing rooms at Hallensteins.  “It’s just that black fall-apart jeans and studded sleeves and the whole frayed and ever-so-slightly unwashed look is likely to get you ejected of suspicion of being a sketchy-as drug dealer.”

 

“Hey!” barks Jamie from his changing cubicle.  “I do laundry!”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” she says.  A pair of pants is tossed over the door.  “Try those on next.”

 

He’s chivvied into getting a pair of slacks, two button-downs and a jacket that means he’ll be able to squire Patch to the theatre without being ‘mistaken for a baglady’. 

 

“You mean bagman.”

 

“I mean baglady.”

 

Privately, Jamie wonders what all the fuss is about right up until they get to the theatre.  Not the movie theatre, but the _actual theatre_ , he discovers, where they’re going to see something called _Miracle on Elm Street_ ; a comedic-horror-improve show that is occasionally also a musical. 

 

The pop culture references mostly go over his head, but puns and sarcasm and irony are universal.

 

And then Patch catches him humming ‘I Bet You Think This Funeral Dirge Is About You’ and mocks him mercilessly for the rest of the week.

 

+++


	9. Lost and found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He can’t actually remember ever laughing before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's what happened the night after 'Tragic as'

+++

 

“ _You’re my mission_ ,” tears its way out of his throat, while the inside of his skull is on fire and something inside him is screaming – _screaming_ – and his fist falls, again and again, blood and bone and brain matter on his knuckles –

 

“HEY!”

 

He’s flung into wakefulness when cold water hits his face.

 

For a moment it’s the Potomac, dank river water filling his mouth and nose, but his vision clears, and the light is wrong.  He’s too warm, though coated in cold sweat and now a tall glass of tap water.

 

There – there’s someone standing over him, staring at him.  Her eyes are only familiar for the alarmed expression that widens them.  It’s the girl.  The girl who lost her dog.

 

He gasps and gasps, fights his way out of the bedclothes and kicks backwards until he’s off the mattress and putting the wall to his back.  The girl watches him, then slowly sinks down onto the carpet.  They sit blinking at each other for a drawn moment, the only sound the rasp of his uneven breathing.

 

When he can speak he asks, “Did you find it?”

 

She stares at him.  “What?”

 

“Your dog.  Did you – did you find your dog?” he manages.

 

“Oh.  Yeah, I did.”  One side of her mouth curls up.  “No thanks to you, arsehole.”

 

It’s so unexpected, so casual and good-natured that it catches him on the back foot, and he laughs; a rough huff of amusement that is just as surprising as what inspired it.

 

He can’t actually remember ever laughing before.

 

He who came before – he laughed.  But that was a long, long time ago.

 

The Soldier had no reason to laugh.  Laughter served no purpose.

 

And whoever he is now…

 

“Who are you?” he blurts, then realised that was probably rude.  He should have just asked for her name…

 

“Patch,” she says.  Then rolls her eyes a little at his incredulous look.  “Look, its short for Patricia, okay…”

 

+++


	10. Paint without paper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What’s with the star? Looks kinda angry!Commie.”

+++

 

The arm is an awkward thing.

 

Oh, it can be a precision instrument or a thing of blunt force, but covert it is not.

 

On some level, it puzzles him; what kind of flashy hubris created such an attachment?  Whose idea was it to leave its chrome panelling exposed, to fit the red star on the ball of his shoulder?  The original arm had come from Zola, but the one he wore now was several generations down the line and had originally been fitted sometime in the late Nineties.  The red star is a holdover from the Cold War, he thinks, while he was still kept at the Soviet ops base.  An emblem to distract from who really held his leash.

 

Recently, someone clever, some tinkerer for spies, had come up with a solution to the Soldier’s gleaming, glaring problem, and created a pseudo-flesh sleeve to fit over it.  It looks…subtly wrong, his left arm appears ever-so-slightly larger than his right, but most people either don’t notice or politely ignore it.

 

Because Patch is not most people, and once tried to punch his left shoulder, she notices.

 

Then she insists he peel it off and begins a suspicious inspection of his arm.

 

“What’s with the star?  Looks kinda angry!Commie.”

 

She’s not wrong.

 

“ _Da_ , comrade,” he says, putting on a frankly shocking Russian accent.  She doesn’t know he speaks it fluently.

 

She rolls her eyes at him.  “Gross.  Let’s paint something else on it.”

 

And he lets her. 

 

She strips the red from the star and uses her enamels to put in a night sky with the shining points of the Southern Cross constellation instead, each of them a filigreed diamond, like stars seen through a telescope. 

 

And then she moves down his arm; under her brushes a golden griffin takes shape, and then an origami forest in a high wind; wolves emerge from the trees, onto a beach where the swirling ocean begins, in which coils a sea dragon – a _taniwha_ – with lambent eyes; the waves become Maori spirals and out of them, around his wrist and the back of his hand, comes the night sky again, and the constellation of Orion, the hunter, painted so that the features of the man can nearly be made out as a subtle web of pale gossamer. 

 

He stands with his sword drawn, shield raised, and in his almost-face, Jamie thinks he can see the determined profile of Steve Rogers.

 

 

+++


	11. Awake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Directly follows 'Lost and Found'

+++

 

She finds a towel for him to wipe the water from his face and ushers him downstairs to sit in front of his own coffee table.  He watches her as she goes back up and pulls a blanket from his bed, dropping it over his shoulders. 

 

He hears the jingle of tags, and the dog that was lost, is let in through his front door, leading with its prodigiously long nose that seems to curl around the door, he’s so eager to get in.  They watch each other for a minute while the girl – Patch, short for Patricia – finds tea and honey and milk and puts water on to boil.  She digs out cups and saucers, which be bought instead of mugs because that was the day he remembered his mother (shaking in the secondhand shop, leaning against the shelves and breathing hard, fighting the flood of sensations that threatened to drown him until he heard her voice calling deep inside him), and sets them out on the low table.

 

She pauses, seeing him turn in head towards the balcony doors, shivering, clinging to the blanket, but yearning for the cleansing bite of the night air.

 

She touches his shoulder, and while the dog lopes over to sprawl in his lap, tucking that long nose against his side, she folds back the doors to let in the breeze and half-smothered moonlight.

 

They sit in the buttery light of a single side lamp, and pick stars out of the city sky.

 

+++


	12. YOU'RE WELCOME

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BECAUSE PILLOW FORT I MEAN COME ON

+++

 

Some days are terrible, some days are so mundane it’s nearly surreal.

 

And some days he frankly wonders what he’s gotten himself into.

 

Today he wakes with a snort from an impromptu nap and blinks with blank confusion at the ceiling.

 

Which is apparently now made of woolly tartan blanket and held up with Patch’s neon blue hat stand and the vacuum-cleaner pipe.

 

“PATCH!” he bellows, careful not to move in case the whole structure comes down on him.  There are pillow walls on either side of him and it all looks a bit precarious.

 

“WHAT?” she bellows back from the direction of her art corner.

 

“…WHERE AM I?”

 

“I MADE YOU A PILLOW FORT, YOU’RE WELCOME.”

 

How is this his life?

 

+++


	13. Beating Heart part one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The people are its beating heart."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long one this time because I'm going on holiday to The Wilderness (also known as someone convinced me to go camping WTF) and won't be back until Jan 3rd.

+++

 

When Patch finds out that he’s essentially spent his entire time in the country in either his apartment, her apartment or the other side of the block scouring Symonds Street for sustenance, she puts her game face on and starts using her days between commissions to take him on adventures.

 

They go to downtown to explore and wash up in the Viaduct, looking at the superyachts and eating their weight in sticky ribs and beer-batter fries.  Playing tourist in their own town.  Sitting in for a free open air concert.

 

One weekend they spend an entire day in the Domain throwing sticks and a half-dead tennis ball for Jaz, and eating homemade sandwiches in the sun.  The next day they go back and check out the Winter Gardens – the lingering pit of cold inside him dries up for a moment, the humid air eating away the phantom touch of cryofreeze that finds him at night. 

 

On a Saturday afternoon they pad silently through the massive Grafton Cemetery, which Patch will only do if he’s there with her – it’s like an urban forest thickly littered with ancient graves and  weathered headstones, incongruous in its placement, smack in the middle of downtown Auckland, but it’s not entirely safe.  Patch takes pictures of the trees and headstones under the shafts of golden sunlight, and Jamie kindly doesn’t tell her that he spotted a hobo taking a leak against a tree three meters to the left of them. 

 

Another time they check out the Auckland City Library and Jamie gets them kicked out when he falls asleep on one of the beanbags in the teen fiction section.  Patch blames his on-going hobo erotica.

 

One warm Wednesday two of Patches friends show up, sunburnt and cheerful, and are introduced to him as Moody and Bea. 

 

Bea looks like an English robin; generous figure, velvet brown hair with glinting black eyes set into a pale face, hectic colour riding high on either cheekbone.  She grins at him, cheeky and appreciative.  Moody is young and willowy, shy under the brim of his hat and clutching the messenger bag that knocks his skinny legs.  Jamie catches his pale eyes briefly and mirrors his soft hello, while internally a thing turns over in his chest, seeing another set of skinny legs and shy eyes and – yes, there it is, in the tilt of his head, the creases in his brow – a hidden steel core, waiting inside its unlikely frame.

 

But the women only roll their eyes and herd the menfolk out the door.

 

The Auckland War Memorial Museum waits for them in the Domain, regal and perfectly wrought.  The others touch the monument as they walk over the front courtyard, fingers trailing over its side in what is clearly a regular ritual. 

 

Jamie finds himself hesitating, and then doing the same. 

 

Patch smiles at him; she knows only so much about him, and has pieced together that he’s a veteran (technically true), that he’s just back from war (also sort of true) which is where he got the ‘experimental prosthetic’ (still true), but he can tell that she hasn’t yet puzzled out why he came to New Zealand instead of going home to New York.  She got that from his accent, which gets more and more Brooklyn as parts of Bucky Barnes float to the surface – and this is where things get fuzzy, because he doesn’t know where home is or if there ever will be one that’s not next door to the children’s book illustrator with the elderly windbag borzoi and the tendency to make laser-beam sound affects when she flips anything in a frying pan.

 

They drift through the Maori and Pacific halls, toeing off shoes to step with quiet respect into the full-sized Whare.

 

“It’s a sacred space,” Patch explains, “like the monument outside.  This isn’t just a meeting house, it’s a spiritual home.  It’s alive – that beam up there is the spine, the lateral ones are the ribs, and the carvings outside are the face and arms.” 

 

She smiles up at him.  “The people are its beating heart.”

 

 _They always are_ , he thinks, and smiles back.

 

+++


	14. Don't speak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She doesn't speak Russian!

+++

 

“Hey, don’t go out on the balcony for a while,” Jamie calls in to Patch.  “The guy from 3B is trying the naked sunbathing thing again.”

 

Patch leans around the staircase from the kitchenette and makes a variety of faces at him before saying, “uh, yeeees?”

 

He frowns at her.  “Yes, what?  I didn’t ask you anything.”

 

She throws her soapy hands up.  “How am I supposed to know that, I don’t speak Russian!”

 

Jamie stares at her.  “I wasn’t speaking Russian,” he says slowly.

 

Patch rolls her eyes and goes back to the dishes.  “Uh, yeah you were.”

 

“No I wasn’t!”

 

“Yeah you were!”

 

“How would you know, you don’t speak Russian!”

 

“Well I certainly wasn’t English, and Czech never sounds that angry unless you shout it!”

 

+++


	15. Breath out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something in him writhes with humiliation, to be seen like this, with his brokenness seeping out of him for all – for Patch – to see.

+++

 

“Jay?  Can I come in?”

 

It’s called softly through the bathroom’s sliding door; Patch’s voice, no more cautious than if she were talking to one of her cousins, but gentle.

 

Jamie sinks lower in the water and breathes roughly through his nose for a minute.

 

“I’m fine,” he says, his voice a rasp.

 

His sharp ears catch the infinitesimal sound of Patch putting her forehead against the door.  “Yeah, clearly not, possum,” she answers, still at ease.  He can hear the small smile in her voice, how it subtly changes the shape of her words.  “Been in there for ages, y’know.”

 

Jamie can’t bring himself to reply, but he smiles a little when she adds, “what if I need to pee?”

 

“…go off the balcony,” he says eventually.  “Like 3B.”

 

“Bloody charming,” Patch sasses back.  A minute passes.  Then, in the tones of one attempting bribery, “…I’ll wash your hair for you?”

 

Something in him writhes with humiliation, to be seen like this, with his brokenness seeping out of him for all – for Patch – to see.

 

The rest of him wants something familiar and platonic and easy.  Something to cling to without fear of obligation.

 

And he really wants his hair washed.  Patch has magic hands.

 

“Yeah,” he says, and then closes his eyes as the door slowly slides open and Patch slips in.  She leaves it open a few centimetres, but Jaz hooks his ridiculous prehensile nose around it and shoves it back a hand-span, peering in at them with his big sad eyes.

 

Patch scoffs softly at the dog and goes about pulling off her socks and rolling up her slouchy pants.  The width of the bathroom is the length of the tub, so both ends are set into a wall.  There is no place for her to sit but one end of the tub.  Jamie sits forward, spine curving at the sensation of a body behind him and no weapon to hand.  He feels her feet and calves dip into the water, and carefully settles back.

 

Patch puts a gentling hand on his shoulder and tuts at the water temperature.  “You’ll get a chill,” she mutters like somebody’s mother, and has him let some of the water out while she pulls down the shower head to drench his hair and knees of her pants. 

 

The tub refills with hot water, and he begins slow, rhythmic breathing, drawing in the steam and slowly relaxing as Patch lathers his scalp with eucalyptus shampoo, fingers kneading away the knots at the base of his skull and the unconscious tension at his temples.

 

He tips his head forward and dozes, one sudsy ear gluing to Patch’s sodden knee.

 

“Get some sleep, dork,” Patch says, and he does.

 

+++


	16. Beating Heart part two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hall of Remembrance is a gateway to war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, so, uh...been a while.

+++

 

He gets as far as the Hall of Remembrance, and then stops.

 

The war exhibits are located on the top floor of the museum.

 

There are sound effects.

 

He can make out excerpts from radio broadcasts, the rumble of older model planes – war birds – and the over-familiar racket of artillery.

 

He stops without even realizing his feet aren’t carrying him forward anymore.

 

“Jamie?”

 

They’re looking at him anxiously, and god, god they’re so young, they’re all so young.

 

He goes to speak but his throat only bobs, somehow muted.

 

Patch says nothing.  She takes his hand, his flesh one, and leads him back to the stairwell.  She takes him down a flight until the only sounds are their breathing, the distant voices of other patrons, music floating in from somewhere, some other exhibit.  She presses on his shoulder until he sits, and then sits beside him.

 

“I can’t,” he manages five minutes later.

 

“You don’t have to,” Patch says quietly.  “I should have thought…”  Her head dips.  “I’m sorry, Jay.”

 

He squeezes her hand – she hasn’t let go of it – and shakes his head.  “No, s’okay.  I was fine, I just.  The guns, y’know?”

 

She nods, hazel eyes finding his, watching him intently for a moment, almost like she’s searching for something.

 

“You’re one of the bravest people I know,” she says.

 

“I’m really not,” he tells her, throat working again, fighting the thickness there.

 

She smiles, small and sad, and puts her other hand to his crown to tip his face down so she can kiss his forehead.

 

“That’s not for you to decide, my dear,” she tells him.

 

+++


	17. After the Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Right. Report. And quickly, Agent, I don’t have a lot of time here.”

+++

 

“…Agent 83,” the man says.  “I was expecting –”

 

“Agent 52,” Agent 83 says, squinting through the blood crusted around one eye, “yeah, he’s not coming.”

 

“He’s –”

 

“He was Hydra.”  Agent 83 looks tired.  And very young.

 

“Is your line still secure?”

 

“Alfa romeo tango forty-four papa.”

 

“Right.  Report.  And quickly, Agent, I don’t have a lot of time here.”

 

Agent 83 swallows, carefully scrubs his hand over his face.  “Subject is secure.  Is aware of shift in central management and fallout from attempted takeover.  Stable.”

 

“You’re sure?”

 

“As sure as I can be, sir.”

 

“Good.   Keep on it, Agent 83.”

 

“Will do, sir.”

 

The connection cuts out.

 

Agent 83 closes his eyes briefly and then looks around at the wreckage of the office.  It’s four in the morning on a Thursday and SHIELD has just fallen, the first three dominos falling into a river on the other side of the planet.  A call had come through here, and Agent 83 was given a choice by his SO.

 

He wonders what he’s going to do with the body.

 

+++


	18. 3B

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He opens his eyes, and looks down the barrel of a Glock just as the hand holding it slides the hammer back.

+++

 

Jamie is woken by a cold, wet touch to the corner of his mouth.

 

“Jaz,” he says without opening his eyes, “we are not those kinds of friends.”

 

Jaz whines, then claims vengeance by licking a long, slimy stripe across Jamie’s mouth and nose.

 

“Jesus, come on,” he groans, getting up and shoving the Borzoi away.

 

He opens his eyes, and looks down the barrel of a Glock just as the hand holding it slides the hammer back.

 

“Winter Soldier,” says 3B, “I need you to come with me now.”

 

Jamie does not think.  He reacts.

 

In the time it takes to blink, his left hand has shot out like striking snack and crushed 3B’s wrist.  He makes a strangled sound and drops the pistol, which Jamie neatly snatches out of the air with his right hand before turning it on 3B and tucking the muzzle under the man’s double chin.

 

“No,” Jamie enunciates clearly.  “I don’t think I do.”

 

“You don’t have a choice,” 3B wheezes, then yelps when Jamie adds a little pressure to his captured wrist.  “They’re coming for you.”

 

“When?”

 

“Now.”

 

+++

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLOT!


	19. Muninn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.  
>  \- Elie Wiesel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went to the Holocaust memorial at our local Museum today.

+++

 

He reads.

 

He reads and reads and reads, for hours and hours and hours.  He reads everything about his war that he can lay hands on.  About what was happening in other places when he was there, before the train – before the fall.  He reads about all that happened afterwards.

 

He reads about the six million murdered Jews, about the five hundred ‘non-Aryans’ and resistance fighters, homosexuals and supposed criminals who were slaughtered, about the camps and the mass graves and the many thousands of blind eyes that were turned.

 

He reads and he remembers.

 

He reads and, though he longs to, cannot bring himself to forget.

 

+++

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...things will probably be getting a little more linear after this.


	20. Time to go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “They’re coming.”

+++

 

There is the sound of a key in the lock.

 

Jamie tightens his grip on 3B and waits, mentally preparing for further Hydra agents equipped with better firearms.

 

“Hey,” Patch says, and Jamie stops breathing, “so apparently it’s possible for a supermarket to completely run out of cream cheese and…”

 

She stares at 3B.  3B stares back.

 

Her gaze ticks to the gun, then to Jamie, then back to 3B.

 

“Jamie,” says Patch, very slowly, “I’m going to try to be sensitive about this, what with the PTSD, but _what the actual Christ is he doing in my flat and why is there a gun_?”

 

3B chooses this moment to attempt speech.  Jamie jams the muzzle a little higher under his jaw and says to Patch:

 

“I can explain everything.”

 

Which is about the point when the elevator explodes two floors down.

 

Patch shrieks and dives forward into the apartment, dodging the shrapnel from the shredded doors.  Jaz is up off his dogbed and yelping with alarm.  3B chooses this moment to attempt to take the Glock back, so Jamie breaks his wrist in three places and knocks him out with the butt of the handgrip.

 

“What the _fuck_?” Patch shouts, grabbing Jaz’s collar and hauling him back – he’s decided to be angry now and is barking at the open doorway.

 

“They’re coming.”

 

“What?  Who’s coming?”

 

“I have to go,” he says, barely away of what he’s saying.  He uncocks the gun, tuck’s in the back of his jeans and turns to her.  “Patch, I’m so sorry, I have to go.”

 

She stares at him, filled with confusion.  “Jamie, you’re not making sense…”

 

“If I knew what he was…if I thought they had followed me here…”

 

“Who!” Patch demands, “who the hell…?”

 

“Hydra,” says a new voice.

 

In the time it takes to say, ‘fuckknuckle’ Jamie has wheeled around, raised and re-cocked the gun and put Patch behind him.

 

Moody looks back at them from the doorway, smoke from the now flaming elevator shaft swirling around him.  He has a matched set of handguns riding his holsters under his jacket and Jamie can see the subtle curve of a smaller sidearm at his lower leg, probably an ankle holster.  He’d also put money on there being another two grenades in either of his jacket pockets.  There is dust in his hair, smeared across one freckled cheek, and the set of his jaw reminds Jamie so strongly of Steve it’s physically uncomfortable to keep the gun pointed at him.

 

“Hi,” says Moody, “not to be needlessly dramatic, but come with me if you want to live.”

 

Jamie narrows his eyes.  “You’re SHIELD.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Here for me.”

 

“Uh, no, actually.”

 

_What?_

 

Jamie is about to vocalize this when Patch shoves him out of her way and barks, “Gerald Mackenzie Moody, did you just _blow up my lift_?”

 

“Uh, yes,” Moody says, “but to be fair it was riddled with Hydra agents coming to kill or capture you and speaking of, we should really be anywhere that is not here when they trip the things I left in the –”

 

**BOOM**

 

“– stairs.”

 

“Patch,” Jamie says, “what in this flat can you not live without?”

 

She takes a shaking breath and says, “Jaz.  And you.”  She gives him a small, wavering smile.  “My sister has all the heirlooms at her place.”

 

“Okay,” Moody says, striding past them to the balcony and flinging open the doors, “time to go.”

 

 +++

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH LOOK, MORE PLOT


	21. Quiet night in

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Was that Patricia from 8D?"

+++

 

Sarah and Beth are having a quiet evening in.

 

Right up until a man swings through their ranch slider, showering their living room with glass. He is wearing several firearms and a tac vest (Sarah knows this from her deep love of _Stargate SG-1_ ) and very nice combat boots. He also has a very familiar woman with him.

 

“Sorry!” calls Patricia from 8D as she and her companion flee through their front door, “Sorry!”

 

“Wasn’t that Patricia from 8D?” Beth says faintly.

 

Another man swings into their living room with Patricia’s dog over his shoulder.

 

“No one calls her that,” he says, rising smoothly from his crouch on their ruined rug and striding after the first two.

 

There is a moment of quiet in the apartment. Distantly, they can hear helicopters and shouting overhead.

 

“Did that just happen?” asks Beth.

 

“Can’t talk,” Sarah says, tapping urgently at her phone, “must tweet.”

 

+++


	22. Connections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hi, I’m Agent 83, I’m you’re protection detail.”

+++

 

“This,” Patch says doubtfully, “is you getaway vehicle?”

 

“Yes,” says Moody, who was clearly not expecting this to be the point where Patch put her foot down and told them all to shove it because she was done with this shit.

 

“Where am I supposed to sit?” Jamie wants to know.

 

“Where is _my dog_ supposed to sit?” Patch asks.

 

“It’s a Mini Cooper, not a bloody Bambino!” Moody growls, and Jamie recovers a rather vivid series of moments when Steve did the same to great effect, despite being a hundred pounds soaking wet.

 

Somehow, they all manage to get in – “It’s like a flipping clown car skit,” Patch mutters – and discover that Moody drives like he’s fighting for first in a Grand Prix, especially while pursued by Hydra agents in their terribly clichéd black SUVs.

 

“Guys,” Jamie says, keeping his voice very level while watching the pursuing vehicles from the back window, “if they try to take me I need you to –”

 

“If that sentence ends with either of us shooting you I will reach around this bucket seat and slap you _so hard_ , James Winter,” Patch says. Her hands are white-knuckling the dash so he decides not to push his luck.

 

“Although if it ends in you explaining why I just had to flee my home with my dog and the clothes on my back, that would be brilliant,” she adds, although it’s less of a suggestion and more of a demand to divulge least she start fucking shit up.

 

“Uh,” says Moody, taking the next corner at sixty-five K and drifting like a pro, “you don’t really have the clearance for it…”

 

Patch glares at him. It’s very effective.

 

“…but you clearly have the crazy eyes for it so okay,” Moody finishes. “Hi, I’m Agent 83, I’m you’re protection detail.”

 

“Her what?” says Jamie, head whipping around from watching the gaining SUVs.

 

“Fuck off,” Patch says, blankly.

 

“But you’re SHIELD,” Jamie says, sharp. “What is she to SHIELD?”

 

“There was a mandate put in place just before the Battle of New York,” Moody explains. “Anyone with familial or martial connections to ranking agents on the Avengers Initiative –”

 

“What?” says Patch, beginning to look alarmed.

 

“And since you have connections to two –”

 

“WHAT?” Patch says, her face draining of colour. “What – Jesus, my sister.   _What about Pippa_?”

 

“Pippa’s fine, her team is intact, she’s safe,” Moody says quickly.

 

“If Pippa has a team, why is there only one of you?” Jamie demands. “If she’s such a high-value target, why only one agent?”

 

“Well, I had a supervising officer,” Moody says, thin-lipped, “but it turned out he was a Hydra plant, so I may have shot him in the middle of his Hail Neo-Nazi spiel when he tried to recruit me.”

 

“Fair enough.”

 

“No!” barks Patch, “No, not fair enough! This explains NOTHING! Why are they after me, why now? I mean is the Avengers still even a thing? SHIELD’s gone! And you,” she rounds on Jamie, “why would they come after you?”

 

There is a moment of blank puzzlement.

 

“Seriously?” says Moody, deftly twirling the wheel to send them sailing around a truck.

 

“Who do you think gave me this?” Jamie says, holding up his left hand.

 

“You said it was an experimental prosthetic!”

 

“Uh,” put in Moody, “from what my briefing packet talked around, it kind of is? A bit? Just…not for public consumption.”

 

“ _Meaning_?” Patch growls, hazel eyes glinting dangerously.

 

“They’re gaining on us,” Jamie says, then eels out of the rear passenger window and climbs onto the roof of the car.

 

He hears Patch say, “What in god’s name –” just before he leaps onto the hood of the lead SUV, scales the windshield and goes about peeling the roof off like a can of sardines. Then he starts grabbing people and throwing indiscriminately.

 

When he’s finished, he performs a neat leap and ricochet movement off the side of a passing bus and climbs back into the Mini Cooper.

 

“…right,” Patch says faintly. “Ninja assassin arm. Obviously.” Then she looks back and her eyes lock on his metal hand. “Oh for fucksake, look at those scratches! I’m going to have to repaint the whole thing, Jamie!”

 

“Oh I’m sorry,” he gripes, “next time I tear the roof off a car of trained killers I’ll wear a glove shall I, ma’am?”

 

“Wow,” says Moody, with no explanation whatsoever. “This is my life now.”

 

+++


	23. We all live in a yellow...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Borzoi yelps his displeasure, wriggles around in an awkward circle, managing to tread on Jamie’s crotch not once but twice, and then vomits into the water which still reaches their hips.
> 
> “Great,” Jamie says. “That’s just…great."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All on for man and boy now.

+++

 

They manage to shake the remaining pursuers –

 

“Okay, everyone take a deep breath and think happy thoughts,” says Moody as they careen through the Viaduct Harbour, scattering weekenders and tourists.

 

“Why?” Jamie says suspiciously.

 

“Oh, no, _really_?” says Patch, “These are my favourite boots…”

 

– by driving the Mini off the end of a pier.

 

It sinks rapidly as water floods in. Moody reaches back and shoves something small and metallic between Jaz’s jaws, then puts a plastic bag over his struggling head and hangs on while the dog thrashes, white mist floods the bag and Jaz goes still.

 

“What did you do?” Patch demands shrilly, trying to keep her head above water.

 

“Don’t worry, he’s fine,” Moody says. “Dogs don’t hold their breath on command, remember.”

 

Jamie feels abruptly ill – something about the enclosed space, the rising water, the cold… suffocation in slow motion, inevitable – and without thinking, puts a hand out to grip Patch’s. She meets his eyes over the water, and together they take a deep breath, just as bullets riddle the water around the car, thudding against the roof of the Mini.

 

For a moment, they drift, their hearts roaring in their ears.

 

And then there is a heavy, metallic clunk, the car shudders and Jamie feels the pressure shift as they are drawn downwards, more swiftly.

 

Then the water begins to drain. He sees the doors flex, hears soft buzzing which must be the pump, and the hissing of seals enabling throughout the little car.

 

“Oh Christ,” Patch gasps as the water level drops below their faces.

 

Moody takes the bag from Jaz’s head and the Borzoi yelps his displeasure, wriggles around in an awkward circle, managing to tread on Jamie’s crotch not once but twice, and then vomits into the water which still reaches their hips.

 

“Great,” Jamie says. “That’s just…great. Where the hell are we?”

 

“Nearly there,” Moody says, “remember to equalize.”

 

It takes a few more minutes of popping their ears and tried to breathe regularly without gagging on the smell of the dispersing dog sick, but finally there’s another, more decisive clunk, everything goes dark, and then they’re level again.

 

Lights come on, water gurgles.

 

When they get out of the car, the lights come up, and…

 

They appear to be in a moderately sized office.

 

“From the Seventies,” Patch says, gazing around at the very dated furniture.

 

“Early Sixties, actually,” Moody says. “One of the first bases in the South Pacific, before Australia even.”

 

“Right, explains the shagpile,” Patch says, eyeing up the carpet in what appears to be a staff corner with a curvaceous sofa that has seen better days and an asymmetrical coffee table.

 

“This is your secret base?” Jamie says.

 

“It won’t be in a while,” Moody says, regretful. “I give it three hours, tops, before they figure out where the car has gone. But that gives us time to come up with a proper evac plan.”

 

“Great,” says Patch, flopping onto the sofa and taking off her waterlogged boots. “And while you’re at it, you can both explain what the ever-loving fuck is going on.”

 

“Shotgun not going first,” Moody says to Jamie.

 

+++


	24. Lines that I couldn't trace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In my place  
> in my place  
> were lines  
> that I couldn't trace  
> and I was lost  
>  \- Coldplay

+++

 

“So, to recap,” Patch says, standing in front of the pair of them and eyeing them like they’re naughty school boys and she’s about to call their parents, “you –” she points at Moody – “are my body guard –”

 

“Protection detail,” Moody corrects earnestly.  “What?  It’s an important distinction to make.  I’m _covert_.”

 

“…I’m standing in your secret base,” Patch says dry, as the Northern Territories in a drought.  “And you,” she continues, pointing to Jamie, “Are a former assassin type person.  For Neo-Nazis who used to be actual Nazi’s and had the bad taste to name themselves after a Greek monster who _was vanquished_.”

 

“Really?  The Hydra died?”

 

Patch stares at them.  “Am I the only one who did Classics in high school?”

 

“Never finished high school,” Jamie says.

 

“I like physics,” says Moody.  “Helps with shooting things.”

 

Patch closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose.  “Okay, your weird love of the pseudo-math aside, would someone like to explain how a former assassin came to be living in the place next to mine?”

 

Jamie fidgets.  Moody casts him a sidelong look and pipes up, “Possibly it’s a sensitive subject…?”

 

Patch sighs, and sits down on the terrible asymmetric coffee table.  She looks up and reaches out, touching her fingertips to the back of his metal hand, where the painted Orion stands,  a little worse for wear, but still beautiful.

 

“I appreciate that,” she says – of course she does, she’s seen him through a lot of nightmares, a lot of flashbacks and unexpected triggers and the occasional broken crockery.  “But…this is my life, here.  An hour ago, my biggest worry was that I wouldn’t be able to make a cheesecake in time for Bea’s birthday thing and now I’m worrying about one of my best friends being a former employee of the people who may want to kill me.”

 

His stomach drops and he feels like there’s something sitting on his chest.  “You’re right,” he rasps, you’re right, you…you’re owed an explanation.”

 

He looks up at her, meets her anxious eyes.

 

“You won’t like it.”

 

“I don’t have to like it,” she says gently.  “I just have to work with it.”

 

“I’m always…I’m always grateful you met me when you did.  I mean, I was kind of an asshole to you, I know that, but I was…”

 

He breaks off for moment.  Remembers.  Aches to forget, but terrified to, because before, all there was, was forgetting.  Memory is a luxury, however painful.

 

“Because it was worse, before.  I was so much worse…”

 

+++


	25. If you leave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m sorry,” he says, “for what happened to you, and that it was people we trusted who did it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That chapter title is a little clue to what you should be queuing up for this...
> 
> (in case it's not obvious, go with 'Shallows' by Daughter)

+++

 

They have time to change into spare tac gear, dry their clothing and dress for a hasty departure.  Patch gets to keep her boots.

 

That’s about as positive as it gets.

 

Jamie has just taken a mouthful of coffee as they sit down to begin to plan their departure, when there is a thud and a crack from above.

 

Water seeps down from the ceiling over the car.

 

“They’re trying the front door,” Moody says softly.

 

“What do we do?” Patch breathes.

 

“You go out the back,” Moody says.  “Get your gear.”

 

“Wait, you mean ‘we’,” Patch insists.  “ _We_ are going out the back.”

 

“Patch…”  Moody says, putting his hands on her shoulders.  “Look, were I not gayer than a double rainbow over Disneyland…”

 

“You’d be declaring your undying love for me and having my babies, I know,” Patch says impatiently.  “What are you _saying,_ Moody?”

 

“You’re the asset here,” Jamie says, gentle.  “You and me, bad things happen if Hydra gets a-hold of us.  Especially me.”

 

“And even if they don’t want you anymore,” Moody says, “that makes you expendable to them.”  His face hardens.  “But not to me.”

 

Patch’s breath goes out of her, and she puts her arms tight around him, like she knows what’s coming next.

 

“You wanted to know which Avengers you were connected to,” Moody says into her shoulder, the sandy sea-wreak of her hair.  “Patch, the primary one’s your dad.”

 

She makes a startled sound against his neck and struggles backwards, her face white.  “No…no, he can’t…” she insists.  “He…”

 

Jamie feels her distress like a fist to the gut and reaches out, taking one cold hand in his flesh one and holding tight.  She’s shivering – she’s been strong through all of this, but this…this is personal, now, and she’s shaking.

 

“Patch, I’m sorry,” Moody says.  “But you have to go _now_.  Take the second corridor, follow it up, you’ll come out on Vulcan Lane, and then you need to go as far as you can without getting on a plane.”

 

He looks at Jamie, and he’s not Moody anymore, he’s Agent 83 and he has a job to do.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says, “for what happened to you, and that it was people we trusted who did it.”

 

“Moody,” Patch says, gathering Jaz to her, her other hand clenched in his coat while he whines and leans against her, “Moody, you’re coming with us, you can come with us.”

 

“No, I really can’t,” he tells her, “I’m going to stay here and make it look like we all die in the explosion they’re planning –”

 

And then if he’s still alive and can keep from being captured, he’ll disappear.

 

But not with them.

 

+++


	26. In the wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m about to do something dumb, but if this doesn’t work, I just wanted to update you.”

+++

 

“Agent 83, is your line secure?”

 

“Alfa romeo tango forty-four papa, we don’t have a lot of time here, sir.”

 

“Explain, Agent.”

 

“I’m about to do something dumb, but if this doesn’t work, I just wanted to update you.”

 

“Very well, report.”

 

“Hostiles arrived at the nest to retake the asset. I headed them off and escorted the asset and the subject to safety. I’m about to put them off the scent.”

 

“How?”

 

“I’m going to blow things up and make it look like an accident, sir.”

 

There’s a pause, static hissing down the line, and for a moment Agent 83 is worried his line has gone dead.

 

“…I see. Then good luck, Agent.”

 

“Thank you, sir.”

 

“The asset and the subject? Where are they?”

 

“In the wind, sir. In the wind and gaining speed.”

 

+++

 

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that about wraps this puppy up. Cheers to everyone who left kudos :)
> 
> Next up, I'll be chronicling Patch and Bucky's adventures in the wild, and who knows, you might even get to meet Pippa, she's fun (and crazy).


End file.
